The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 5 | Issue 10 | Oct 01, 2007

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The Nanking Atrocity: An Interpretive Overview

Fujiwara Akira

The Nanking Atrocity: An InterpretiveOverview

Fujiwara Akira

Translator’s Introduction

This article is slightly adapted from a chapterby the late Fujiwara Akira, an emeritusprofessor at Hitotsubashi University until hisdeath in 2003, which first appeared in BobTadashi Wakabayashi, ed., The NankingAtrocity 1937-38: Complicating the Picture(http://www.amazon.com/Nanking-Atrocity-1937 - 3 8 - C o m p l i c a t i n g - A s i a -Pacific/dp/1845455002/ref=sr_1_1/103-2596424-4990219?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193186312&sr=8-1) (New York and London: BerghahnBooks, 2007). Fujiwara wrote one of twointroductory chapters to this volume about theNanking Massacre, the seventieth anniversaryof which will be observed in December.

In this essay, Fujiwara provides a concisenarrative of Japan’s decision to escalate the“China Incident” into a full-scale war by July1937. This ultimately led to an assault onChina’s wartime capital of Nanking by imperialarmed forces, who captured it in December.Fujiwara also gives a trenchant, criticalaccount of the Nanking Massacre (a.k.a. “theRape of Nanking”), plus an admittedly partisanyet nonetheless fair analysis of right-wingviews in Japan today that downplay or deny thisatrocity. On this last point, Fujiwara arguesthat Japanese deniers and nationalisticrevisionists seek to build a public consensusthat will allow their nation to re-emerge as amilitary power uninhibited from waging future

wars based on putatively unwarranted feelingsof guilt about the past.

The English translation of Fujiwara’s chapter,completed in 2002, seems prescient in the lightof subsequent events in violation of Article IX ofthe postwar Constitution: 1) Japan dispatchedarmed troops to Iraq in January 2004 andextended their mission in December of 2004until July 2006. 2) Self-Defense Forces havebeen providing logistical support to US militaryforces in the form of fuel supplies despite well-founded allegations that these are beingredirected to Iraqi battlefields. 3) Earlier thisyear, former Prime Minister Abe sought to“reinterpret” Article IX into non-existencebased on proposals from a panel of advisorshand-picked for precisely that purpose.

One major article of postwar leftist faith is thatJapan must never again become a “normalnation”-- in the sense of exercising itssovereign right to wage war-- because imperialarmed forces at Nanking and elsewhere provedthat they could not be trusted to behave in alawful, humane, and responsible manner. Thepresent essay constitutes Fujiwara’s finaltestament to this article of faith, prepared foran international readership.

Note that, as translated by Wakabayashi forJapan Focus, this essay omits endnotes andmacrons over long vowels in Japanese terms. Asmall number of Chinese terms-- such asNanking, Amoy, Hsiakwan, and KwantungArmy-- are romanized in Wade-Giles becausethey have found their way into the Englishlanguage in that form. All other Chinese termsare rendered in pinyin. Bob Wakabayashi

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Prelude

Modern Japan’s aggression against Chinabegan with the Meiji-Qing or First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, and continued withthe Twenty-one Demands of 1915, theShandong Expeditions of 1927-28, and theManchurian Incident of 1931-3. But an all-outwar of aggression began with the 7 July 1937armed clash at Marco Polo Bridge outsideBeijing. Culpability for turning that minorskirmish into an all-out war lay with Japan--primarily the imperial government and centralarmy authorities. Although a local truce settledthe affair on 11 July, Prime Minister KonoeFumimaro’s government expressed “graveresolve” in passing a cabinet resolution to sendmore troops on that same day. Konoe, animperial prince, flaunted his regime’sbelligerence by inviting the media to his officialresidence and calling on them to foster nationalunity. Based on this cabinet resolution,commanders hastily sent two brigades fromManchuria and a division from Korea tonorthern China, the General Staff prepared tosend three divisions from Japan, and the ArmyMinistry halted all discharges. At that time,two-year recruits received an early discharge inJuly-- before their active duty actually ended--to go home for peak months of farm work whenthe labor of young men was sorely needed. Byrescinding this provision, the governmentshowed that Japan was gearing up for war inearnest.

Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro in 1937

Japan’s hard line created a sense of crisis inChina. Chiang Kai-shek of the Guomindang(GMD) Nationalist government met with ZhouEnlai of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on17 July to discuss stepped-up efforts for aunited front, and Chiang made a speech on theneed for resolve in resisting Japan. The Chinesepeople’s will to resist heightened as two morearmed clashes broke out in the north Chinatinderbox. By 27 July, reinforcements fromKorea and Manchuria had arrived, as did navalair force units, and Emperor Hirohito issuedArmy Chief of Staff Order 64. It read: “Alongwith its present duties, the China GarrisonArmy (CGA) shall chastise Chinese forces in theBeijing-Tianjin area and pacify [i.e., occupy]strategic points.” The emperor used the term

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chastise that Prime Minister Konoe later madefamous. On 27 July, the government decided tosend reinforcements from Japan proper. Chiefof Staff Order 65, issued by the emperor, calledfor sending three divisions and mobilizinganother 209,000 men plus 54,000 horses. Realfighting began on 28 July with a generaloffensive in the north that saw imperial troopsoccupy Beijing and Tianjin.

This course of events was the converse of thatwhich began the Manchurian Incident. InSeptember 1931, the imperial government andcentral army authorities had wanted to settlethat conflict quickly whereas field armies wereintent on expanding it. Now, in July 1937, itwas the government in Tokyo that escalated thewar by sending massive reinforcements tonorthern China even though field armies hadreached a settlement on 11 July. Ishiwara Kanji,Chief of the General Staff Operations Division,reversed his hawkish views of ManchurianIncident days, and was now an exceptionamong central army authorities in opposing theextension of operations to China. More typicalof that group was Army Minister SugiyamaHajime, who sided with Prime Minister Konoe,Foreign Minister Hirota Koki, and other civilgovernment hawks. Even so, the initiative forfuture army decision making would ultimatelylay with local commanders who zealouslypushed for escalation despite their gravelyflawed grasp of conditions in China. Blind tothe patriotism forging national unity there, theypersisted in disparaging the Chinese militaryand people in the belief that “one telling blow,”or quick decisive victory, would make theenemy sue for peace.

In August 1937, naval marine units took thewar to Shanghai on the pretext of protectingJapanese civilians against popular Chineseunrest. Army hawks dismissed opposition frommore cautious elements such as Ishiwara Kanji,and boldly extended the scope of operationsfrom northern to central China. Hirohito, as he

himself would relate in 1946, sought to expandthe war at this time by sending even more unitsfrom Manchuria. He berated Ishiwara forweakness and was instrumental in transferringunits from Qingdao in northern China toShanghai. Thus the central government startedwhat became a full-scale war by dispatchinghuge army units, but offered no justificationworthy of the name, saying only that imperialforces would “chastise the unruly Chinese”-- aslogan that Konoe issued in lieu of formallydeclaring war. There were 3 main reasons forpursuing this conflict as an “incident” ratherthan as a war: (1) Even at this late date, armyand government leaders felt convinced that“one telling blow” would end it; they did notdream that a major, long-term conflict wouldresult. (2) Japan had no compelling reason forwar. “Chastise the unruly Chinese” was hardlya war aim that would whip up popular supportat home. (3) With the premiership of HirotaKoki from March 1936 to February 1937, thearmy and navy had begun pursuing armamentexpansion programs that relied on imports ofstrategic matériel from the United States, aneutral power. Japan could not go on importingthese key items easily under international law ifit formally became a belligerent state bydeclaring war on China.

Central army leaders in Tokyo had no plan toattack the capital of Nanking when theydispatched troops to Shanghai in August; inthis, they differed from Matsui Iwane andYanagawa Heisuke, who later led the assault onNanking. Instead, leaders in Tokyo expected aquick local settlement like that which hadended the Shanghai Incident of January to May1932. This time, a Shanghai ExpeditionaryArmy (SEA), or Shanghai Expeditionary Force(SEF), was assembled on 15 August 1937 underMatsui’s command. It had strictly limitedorders: “to protect imperial subjects bydestroying enemy forces in and aroundShanghai and occupying strategic points to thenorth.” Nanking, it bears noting, is roughly 300kilometers west of Shanghai. The SEA’s initial

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strength was hastily set at two divisions, and aheavy artillery unit joined within two weeks.Three and a half more divisions joined inSeptember, and one more in October. Thus theSEA comprised the Third, Ninth, Eleventh,Thirteenth, Sixteenth, One Hundred-first, andOne Hundred-sixteenth divisions. The TenthArmy was formed under Yanagawa’s commandin October. It comprised three and a halfdivisions: the Sixth, Eighteenth, One Hundred-fourteenth, plus part of the Fifth. This TenthArmy was not supposed to attack Nankingeither. Its mission, like that of the SEA, was todestroy Chinese armies and protect Japanesenationals in the Shanghai area-- nothing more.

The imperial army’s foremost prioritythroughout the 1930s was to prepare for warwith the Soviet Union. Army leaders had nowish to commit large forces in China for thelong term, and most were convinced that this“incident” would end after they scored onemajor victory. But events at Shanghai shockedthem. Shells ran peri lously low. By 8November, casualties had skyrocketed to 9,115killed and 31,125 wounded. Reinforcements,which had never been anticipated, were sentrepeatedly. The Third and Eleventh divisions,

for example, had to be totally replenished.Army leaders shifted the war’s main theaterfrom northern to central China in October andthe Tenth Army landed behind Chinese lines atHangzhou Bay on 5 November. Only thatdaring move broke the bloody stalemate atShanghai, but Chinese units beat a hasty fullretreat to avoid encirclement and annihilation.Japan, then, did not deliver the “one tellingblow” to wipe out enemy forces, and thus couldnot achieve victory in this “incident.”

On 7 November, two days after the Tenth Armylanded, it and the SEA combined to form aCentral China Area Army (CCAA) underMatsui’s overall command, with Imperial PrinceAsaka Yasuhiko taking over the SEA. At itsheight, this newly-formed CCAA numbered anestimated 160,000 to 200,000 men. Thereorganization signified that Japanese forceswere not just on an expedition to Shanghai, butwould operate in a broader “central Chinaarea.” Even so, the CCAA was sti l l an“impromptu amalgamation,” not a formal battleformation, as reflected in its mission. Its ordersread: “Destroy enemy forces in the Shanghaiarea, break their will to fight, and therebybring an end to the conflict.” The Chief of theGeneral Staff also stipulated a l ine ofdemarcation: “in general, east of the Suzhou-Jiaqing line.” In other words, the CCAA wasordered to remain in the area east of Lake Tai;that is why it received no support-and- supplyunits. Also, six of the CCAA’s ten and a halfdivisions were “special divisions,” limited inmaneuverability, weak in firepower, andmanned by second- or third-pool reservistshastily assembled. They were not officers andmen on the active list, in the fighting prime oftheir early twenties. Their abrupt recall toactive duty came in their mid- to late-thirties,or even early-forties-- long after they felt theirmilitary obligations were over and they hadreturned to civilian life as bread-winners.Hence, morale and amenability to militarydiscipline were often poor.

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When the entire Chinese army began to retreat,the CCAA ignored orders and gave chasewestward toward Nanking. Eguchi Keiichi citesSEA Chief of Staff Iinuma Mamoru’s diary toshow that, as early as 18 August, SEAcommander Matsui Iwane already aspired tocapture the enemy capital although centralarmy leaders had no such plans, and evenbefore the CCAA came into being. Matsui,disgruntled by the narrow scope of SEAoperations, had to be chastised: “orders formilitary operations are no different fromimperial rescripts; it is impudent to criticizethese.” But later that same day Matsui openlydeclared: “We must resolve to order troops intoaction as needed based on our traditional spiritof ‘instant engagement, instant victory’ byshifting our main forces from northern China toNanking. We can debate the issue of wherebest to deliver the knock-out blow, but rightnow we absolutely must make Nanking ourmain target.”

Gen Matsui Iwane entering Nanking on December 17,1937

After the Chinese flight began in November,frontline troops came to share the newlypromoted CCAA commander Matsui’saspirations; they craved the glory of being firstto enter Nanking. Their egregious forcedmarches, exacerbated by the absence ofsupport-and-supply units, meant that the rank-

and-file had to rely on plunder to survive enroute. On 20 November, Imperial Headquarters(IH) was set up for the first time since the1904-05 Russo-Japanese War-- a decisive stepboth strategically and symbolically. Belittlingthe China war as a mere “incident,” yet unableto win it, Japan had no choice. Given de factowartime conditions of mass troop deploymentand naval support, the coordinating of the twoservices’ chains of command required an IHunder the 1889 Imperial Constitution. Unlikethe IH in wars before Hirohito’s reign,however, this one was a purely military body in1937. No civilian cabinet member, not even theprime minister, could join its deliberations.Instead, an ad hoc liaison council handledcommunications between the government andIH to ensure that cabinet acts of stateconformed with the emperor’s supremecommand. Thus began the most enormous,expensive, and deadly war in modern Japanesehistory-- one waged without just cause orcogent reason.

The Atrocity Delimited

On 24 November 1937, IH admitted reality andrescinded its first line of demarcation, thatfrom Suzhou to Jiaxing east of Lake Tai; onlythen did it begin to think seriously aboutattacking Nanking. IH now set up a second lineof demarcation cutting across Lake Tai fromWuxi to Huzhou, behind which forces wouldregroup before advancing further. But frontlineunits ignored this line too, and pressed theirattack. On 1 December, the emperor’s ArmyGeneral Staff Order 7 converted the stopgapCCAA from an “impromptu amalgamation” intoa formal battle formation. On the same day, theemperor’s Army General Staff Order 8 read:“CCAA commanders shall assault the enemycapital of Nanking with support from the navy.”Thus, formal orders to attack Nanking camedown only on 1 December. Based on ArmyGeneral Staff Order 8, the CCAA commandedthat: (1) the SEA launch operations on 5December with its main force ready to move

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toward Danyang and Jurong while a subsidiaryforce attacked the enemy rear on the northshore of the Yangzi; and (2) the Tenth Armystart operations on 3 December with its mainforce ready to move toward Lishui and asubsidiary force, toward Wuhu. In fact, the SEAwas already well past Zhangzhou on 29November. I t occupied Danyang on 2December-- something not scheduled to happenuntil the seventh. Likewise, the Tenth Army hadalready taken Guangte on 30 November. Itscommander, Lt. Gen. Yanagawa Heisuke,proclaimed at the head of his troops, “I willpress the attack on Nanking as I deem fit.”Thus, neither the SEA nor the Tenth Armybothered to wait for orders. The aim behindArmy General Staff Order 8 was not to make anall-out rush for Nanking. Both CCAA armieswere to advance along a broad front, regroup,encircle Chinese defense forces, and annihilatethem. But glory-hungry, frontline units lustedto be first in the enemy capital and staged amad dash for it. Thus the attack on Nanking,like that on Shanghai, was out of control fromthe start.

In determining the number of Chinese victimsin the Nanking Atrocity, we must first definethe event’s time span and area. The SEAadvancing from Shanghai, and the Tenth Armyafter landing at Qinhanwei in Hangzhou Bay,repeatedly indulged in rape, arson, plunder,and mass murder. In that sense, YoshidaYutaka and Honda Katsuichi are correct whenthey argue that any study of the Atrocity mustinclude these vicious acts en route to Nanking,not just those in and near the city. Massacrestook place all the way from Shanghai toNanking, so in principle, all persons killed enroute should enter into the total. But insofar aswe call this the Nanking Atrocity-- as opposedto those elsewhere-- I delimit the event aslasting from 1 December 1937, when IH andthe CCAA issued orders to attack Nanking, to 5January 1938, when the imperial army felt thata measure of order had returned to the city.Area-wise, the Atrocity took place on both sides

of the Yangzi, west of the Zhangzhou-Guangdeline, where the two armies met on 1 December.The SEA and Tenth Army main units advancedtoward the capital parallel to the major roadsand rail lines, while subsidiary units forded theYangzi to march along its far bank underartillery support from the Eleventh Battle Fleet.Having let Chinese armies evade annihilation atShanghai, the Japanese now sought to exploitgeography to preclude a second escape bypushing them toward the Yangzi, whichwrapped around and behind the city ofNanking. Ill-advised Chinese plans to defendthe capital at all costs, despite detrimentaltopographic conditions, played into Japanesehands. These flawed defense plans were afactor that contributed to the Atrocity, as didthe fact that Nanking had a huge civilianpopulation, which would be trapped alongsidesoldiers inside city walls.

Japanese Strategic Blunders

The Army General Staff had repeatedly workedout precise, detailed plans for war with theSoviet Union, but never seriously thought aboutfighting the Republic of China, led by JiangJieshi’s GMD regime after 1927, as a nationalentity. Thus, Japan had no long-range blueprintto conquer all of China. The General Staffrevised its “Guidelines for Defense of theEmpire,” its tactical handbooks, and its troopstrength levels in 1918, when it named “Russia,the U.S., and China” hypothetical enemies. Asecond revision took place in 1923, when thelist read, “the United States, Russia, andChina.” However, just placing China on the listdid not mean that the Army General Staff madecareful plans to wage full-scale war against itas a unified nation. Strategic thinking remainedtied to the notion that China was a collection ofwarlord satrapies; thus, Japan needed only tooccupy key areas as tactical needs dictated. Athird revision of “Guidelines for Defense of theEmpire” appeared in June 1936. The text of itssection on “Tactics toward China” has beenlost. But according to a later account by

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Shimanuki Takeharu, this simply called for thearmy to attack and destroy enemy forces innorthern and central China so as to occupy keypoints there, and for the navy to support armyoperations by sinking the Chinese fleet on theYangzi and along the seacoast.

Based on these June 1936 “Guidelines,” theGeneral Staff in August 1936 drew up a plantitled, “Strategy for China: 1937.” This statedthat five hypothetical divisions in northernChina might be bolstered by three more for usein the five provinces of Suiyuan, Rehe,Shandong, Hebei, and Shaanxi. Threehypothetical Ninth Army divisions in centralChina might occupy Shanghai, and a TenthArmy might be formed to land at HangzhouBay. These Ninth and Tenth armies mightmarch on Nanking and seize and occupy thestrategic Shanghai-Hangzhou-Nanking triangle,but in that case, no operations should takeplace elsewhere in China. In southern China,the plan would be for the deployment of onedivision, whose main force might occupyFuzhou and subsidiary forces might occupyAmoy and Swatow. At this time, Japan’s ChinaGarrison Army, stationed in the Beijing-Tianjinarea of northern China, had only recently risenin strength from 1771 to 5774 men. This“Strategy for China: 1937” was the ArmyGeneral Staff’s first specific plan to occupyparts of northern China and to attack Nanking.But, it must be stressed, the “Strategy” wasdrawn up only in response to the Hirotaregimes’s “Second Guidelines for Settling theChina Situation” of August 1936. This latterdocument envisioned a “Detachment of NorthChina” that entailed the army’s help to createan anti-Communist buffer zone of collaboratorregimes. Likewise, the Army General Staffdrew up plans for sending troops to Shanghaiin central China, but only in response tostiffened Chinese defenses. Those plans, too,did not derive from Japanese initiative.

The “Strategy for China: 1937” drafted inAugust 1936, the creation of a SEA in August

1937, and actual assault on Nanking by theCCAA in December 1937, all stemmed from agrave misreading of affairs in China, which wasfast moving toward national consolidation fedby anti-Japanese nationalism. The December1936 Sian Incident, which saw the kidnappingof Chiang Kai-shek by his own generals, clearedthe way for a second round of GMD-CCPcooperation culminating in a united front; it didnot split China as the Japanese had hoped.These momentous events spawned anationwide commitment to resist Japaneseaggression after the July 1937 Marco PoloBridge Incident, which led to full-scalehostilities. In sum, despite naming China ahypothetical enemy, Japanese military leadersneither deemed it a unified nation-state nor didserious strategic planning on that premise. Thisarrogance stemmed from the outdated notionthat Japan need only occupy this or that keyarea in a strictly tactical fashion. Even indrawing up its “Strategy for China: 1937”--when the Army General Staff finally startedthinking about sending troops to central Chinaand Nanking-- no one dreamed that this movewould lead to a full-scale, long-term war.Japanese strategists could understand thebroad political ramifications of attacking anational capital; that is why imperial army unitssped lemming-like over the brink after they sawthe Chinese army beat a retreat from Shanghai.

Such considerations shed light on three majorunderlying causes of the Nanking Atrocity.First, contempt for China as a modern nationled to a deficient concern for applyinginternational law toward it. Just as seriousfighting in northern China began, anundersecretary in the Army Ministry sent anotice dated 5 August 1937 to the ChinaGarrison Army’s Chief of Staff : “It isinappropriate to act strictly in accordance withvarious stipulations in ‘Treaties and PracticesGoverning Land Warfare and Other Laws ofWar’.” Similar notices went out to other unitsas well. The message can only be construed as:“there is no need to obey international law.”

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Second, this overweening attitude dilutedconcern for protecting Chinese civilians, aswell as foreign diplomats and residents, fromthe horrors of war. The CCAA was formedhaphazardly on 7 November 1937. Since it wasnot supposed to move far west of Shanghai, ithad no supply-and-support units to provisiontroops, who could only rely on plunder tosustain themselves en route to Nanking. Thisincreased their frequency of contacts with, andopportunities for violence toward, civilians. TheSEA and the Tenth Army had no liaison staff orunits trained in diplomacy; so those armies’relations with Japanese diplomatic officials inChina were bad, to say the least. Troops vieweddiplomats as a thorn in their side; diplomatswho tried to stop army brutalities exposedthemselves to danger. A third and relatedunderlying cause of the Atrocity lay in theCCAA’s disregard for upholding troop disciplineand morality. It had no specialized militarypolice (MP) units, and the few individual MPswho were on hand could not possibly maintainorder. As one attached to the Tenth Armybewailed, “With less than 100 of us to control200,000 men in several divisions, what couldwe do?”

POWs and the Assault

The 1 December order to attack Nankingprescribed a third line of demarcation; troopswere to regroup and consolidate a front fromthe Mobang Hills to Lishui. From there, theywould face off against Chinese defenders. Thisdid nothing to deter the SEA’s Ninth andSixteenth divisions or the Tenth Army’s Sixthand One Hundred-fourteenth divisions, whichraced abreast of each other, intent on being thefirst to scale the walls of the enemy capital. TheCCAA laid down a fourth line on 7 December, a“line of readiness,” before the final push forNanking; and, it issued instructions, “Essentialsfor Assaulting Nanking,” listing orderlyprocedures for taking the city. CCAAcommander Matsui Iwane advised Chinesecommander Tang Shengzhi to surrender the

capital on 9 December, but received no replyby noon on 10 December. Matsui thereforeordered the attack to resume at 1:00 p.m.Frontline units ignored last-ditch efforts tocontain the conflict, including those by theInternational Committee (IC), whichestablished the Nanking Safety Zone (NSZ).The SEA’s Sixteenth division began to assaultPurple Mountain just outside Nanking to theeast on the tenth, and reached its summit bythe twelfth. The SEA’s Ninth division rushedtoward the city from the southeast. Some of itsunits reached Guanghua Gate in the earlyhours on the ninth, but met fierce resistancefor several days. The SEA pulled one regiment,the One Hundred-third Brigade, or YamadaDetachment, in the Thirteenth division, then onstandby at Zhenjiang, and ordered this brigadeto advance through Wulongshan and Mufushanon the right wing of a beefed-up Sixteenthdivision. On the eleventh, the SEA ordered aregiment in the Third division, then held inreserve, to augment the Ninth division’s leftwing as an advance raiding unit. The TenthArmy’s Sixth and One Hundred- fourteenthdivisions, advancing in parallel from the south,broke through Chinese front lines on 8December and a t t acked the Fukuoencampment at Rain Flower Heights south ofthe city on the tenth. The Tenth Army thenordered the Hiroshima Fifth Division’s KunisakiDetachment, on loan from its Ninth Brigade, toford the Yangzi near Cihechen (Taiping) and toadvance on Pukou. The Tenth Army alsoordered its Eighteenth division, which hadcaptured Wuhu on the tenth, to concentrate itsforces on standby for an assault on Hangzhou.

Thus the Ninth and Sixteenth divisionsmarched toward Nanking from the east; andthe Sixth and One Hundred-fourteenth, fromthe south. On 13 December, the Thirteenthdivision’s Yamada Detachment (or OneHundred-third Brigade) arrived from the north,and the Sixth division’s Forty- fifth Regiment,from the south. Both had orders to plugChinese escape routes between the city’s

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western wall and the Yangzi. For goodmeasure, the Eleventh Battle Fleet patrolledthe Yangzi, and the Fifth division’s KunisakiDetachment advanced on its far bank to cut offChinese troops trying to escape across theriver. All told, CCAA forces assaulting Nankingnumbered 57 infantry battalions or, asKasahara estimates, between 160,000 and200,000 men. They received artillery supportfrom the seventeen-ship Eleventh Battle Fleet.Encirclement of the city would be complete bythe early hours of 13 December. Across thelines, commander Tang Shengzhi did not ordera retreat until 5:00 p.m. on the twelfth. Tangwas the very first to flee, crossing the Yangzi at6 p.m. Tens of thousands of his troops-- untilthen trapped in the city with orders to defend itat all costs-- fled in chaos as their commandstructure totally broke down.

Japanese units learned of this retreat on themorning of the thirteenth. Skirmishes broke outin many areas as small groups of Chinesetroops outside the city, now lacking a chain ofcommand, desperately tried to slip pastadvancing Japanese forces. Then thesurrendering began. Most of the Chinesetroops still inside Nanking rushed to escapehelter-skelter through Bajiang Gate, which ledto the Hsiakwan wharf area. From Hsiakwan,they hoped to cross the Yangzi by boat, by raft,or by clinging desperately to scraps of lumber,or they madly ran up and down the riverbank,only to encounter Japanese forces sent to cutthem off. Huge numbers of Chinese troopsbecame prisoners of war (POWs) on thethirteenth and fourteenth at Hsiakwan,Mufushan, Jiangdong Gate, and Xiaohua Gate.With no avenue of escape, Chinese soldiers lostall will to fight. Despite trying to surrender indroves, most were killed in the pell-mell ofbattle. Sixteenth division commander NakajimaKesago’s diary entries on 13 Decemberdescribe the confusion:

We see prisoners everywhere, so

many that there is no way we candeal with them.... The generalpolicy is: “Accept no prisoners!” Sowe ended up having to take care ofthem lot, stock, and barrel. Butthey came in hordes, in units ofthousands or five-thousands; so wecouldn’t even disarm them.... LaterI heard that the Sasaki Unit [theThirtieth Brigade] alone disposedof about 1 ,500. A companycommander guarding Taiping Gatetook care of another 1,300.Another 7,000 to 8,000 clustereda t X i a n h o G a t e a r e s t i l lsurrendering. We need a reallyhuge ditch to handle those 7,000 to8,000, but we can’t find one, sosomeone suggested this plan:“Divide them up into groups of 100to 200, and then lure them to somesuitable spot for finishing off.”

Thirtieth Brigade commander Maj. Gen. SasakiToichi wrote in his diary on 13 December:

The number of abandoned enemybodies in our area today was tenthousand plus thousands more. Ifwe include those [Chinese] whoseescape rafts or boats on the Yangziwere sunk by f i re f rom ourarmored cars, plus POWs killed byour units, our detachment alonemust have taken care of over20,000. We finished the mop-upand secured our rear at about 2:00p.m. Whi le regrouping, weadvanced to Heping Gate. Later,the enemy surrendered in thethousands. Frenzied troops--rebuffing efforts by superiors torestrain them-- finished off thesePOWs one after another. Even ifthey aren’t soldiers [e.g., medics or

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priests], men would yell, “Kill thewhole damn lot!” after recallingthe past ten days of bloody fightingin which so many buddies had shedso much blood.

Such diary entries by division and brigadecommanders allow us to gauge the chaos ofbattle, and the extent of the slaughter of POWs.Official battle reports exist for some Japaneseunits that vividly describe how they handledPOWs. These sources are housed in theNational Institute for Defense Studies, MilitaryHistory Department Library in Tokyo. Most areincluded in the source collection, Nankin senshishiryo shu, published by the Kaikosha, afraternal society of former imperial armyofficers and conservative revisionists. Forinstance, the Thirty-third Regiment’s battlereport for 10-14 December has a “Booty List”with an entry for POWs: “fourteen officers plus3,082 NCOs and troops.” Under the column“Remarks,” it says, “disposed of POWs.” As arough number of “abandoned enemy corpses,”it lists “220 on the tenth, 370 on the eleventh,740 on the twelfth, and 5,500 on the thirteenth,for 6,830 all told.” But, this battle report goeson, “the figure for 13 December includesdefeated enemy troops whom we executed.”The Thirty-third Regiment took 3,096 POWs on13 December and “disposed of” them. TheSixty-sixth Regiment’s First Battalion battlereport says that it took “1,657” POWs outsideRain Flower Gate from the afternoon of thetwelfth to the morning of the thirteenth. Theappendix in the “Thirty-eighth Battalion BattleReport 12,” says that its Tenth Company took“7,200” POWs on the morning of the fourteenthnear Xiaohua Gate. Other battle reports listingnumbers of POWs taken are those for theKunisaki Detachment’s Forty-first RegimentTwelfth Company, which took “2,350” atJiangxinzhou from the night of the fourteenthto the morning of the fifteenth; the Thirty-thirdRegiment Second Battalion, which took “about200” at Lion Hill on the fourteenth; and theSeventh Regiment, which took “6,670” in the

Naking Safety Zone (NSZ), set up byWesterners as a refugee area, from thethirteenth to the twenty-fourth. Battlefielddiaries left by Japanese units are another formof official source material. Only a few areextant and are housed in Defence Agencyarchives. Among these is that for the TwentiethRegiment’s Fourth Company, which says that ittook 328 POWs at the eastern side of the NSZon the morning of the fourteenth, and shot allof them to death.

Thus battle reports and battlefield diaries--official, public, Japanese military sources--supplement and substantiate personal accountsby Westerners about mass executions ofChinese POWs. Japanese sources of this kindrefute the Ministry of Education’s claim,formerly used in textbook screening, that suchkillings were the acts of a few heartlesssoldiers in the heat of battle and did not takeplace in an organized way throughout the armyas a whole. These sources also expose thefalsity of arguments by Japanese conservativerevisionists who, with studied ignorance ofinternational law, insist that the killing ofPOWs was an extension of combat and thusdoes not constitute a massacre or an Atrocity.Imperial army records show that Japanesesoldiers killed Chinese troops who, having lostall desire and ability to fight back, werebegging to surrender so that their lives mightbe spared.

On the other hand, the fact that battle reportsfor other units are not extant does not meanthat they did not take part in mass killings. Onetypical organized massacre of POWs occurredat Mufushan, northeast of Nanking. There, theThirteenth division’s Yamada Detachment orOne Hundred-third Brigade, which included theSixty-fifth Regiment (Morozumi Unit), tookcustody and “disposed of” 14,777 prisoners.Official, public army records do not mentionthis fact, but other contemporaneous sourcesdo. These include newspapers such as theAsahi shinbun and volume 1 of the Army

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General Staff’s own wartime official history, theShina jihen rikugun senshi. And, personaldiaries and private notes by surviving Japanesesoldiers in that detachment, brigade, andregiment-- plus oral interviews with those men--show that more than 14,477 POWs weremassacred. Because of such damning sources,even the postwar Defense Agency’s official warhistory, the Senshi sosho, and the Kaikosha’sNankin senshi cannot turn a blind eye to thismassacre at Mufushan. The Senshi soshosimply regurgitates an earlier account of theincident, now refuted. According to it, theJapanese units in question released half of their14,777 men and incarcerated the other 8,000or so, but half escaped. The units then tried toescort the remaining 4,000 POWs across theYangzi in order to release them to safety, butthe POWs attacked their Japanese guards, sothe units had no choice but to open fire, kill1,000 in self-defense, and let the rest escape.This account is totally make-believe. The footsoldiers’ personal diaries and other privatesources that Ono Kenji has unearthedconclusively prove that the Japanese units inquestion massacred all of the POWs held incustody in an organized manner.

Thus we can assume that many other Japaneseunits must have taken, and “taken care of,”enormous numbers of POWs-- even though thisassumption cannot be verified irrefutablybecause so few battle reports, battlefielddiaries, or other “official” records remainextant. The Nankin senshi adopts the positionthat killed Chinese POWs must enter the victimcount when “official” records exist or when thetestimonies of eyewitnesses abound, but in allother cases, there is no definitive evidence tosubstantiate the claim that POWs were takenand killed. This argument-- which disparagesnonoff icial , private sources and oraltestimonies-- stems from a desire to lower theChinese victim toll. Still another conservativerevisionist argument is that numbers found inbattle reports and in other official army recordscannot be accepted at face value. As the

Nankin senshi asserts, “units undoubtedlyinflated figures used in reports to superiors soas to exaggerate their ‘battlefield exploits’.” Ofcourse, statistics in these sources are nottotally accurate, but we can only suspectulterior motives when historians discount theirvalidity solely to deflate Chinese victim counts.The key point here is that both official andnonofficial Japanese records-- left by men whodid the killing-- aver that units “took care of,”“dealt with, or “disposed of” POWs; and, insome cases, expressly say, “shot them dead.”The men who left these documents used suchexpressions openly because they lacked anyidea that the killing of POWs was a violation ofinternational law and a grave crime againsthumanity. In response to conservativeminimalists, we can just as easily conjecturethat executions took place when the sourcessay only that units “took” prisoners, and omitexplicit reference to “disposing of” them or“shooting them dead.” Thus the claim that“there are no irrefutable records, ergo therewere no massacres,” and the counterclaim that“massacres occurred even though there is noexpress record thereof,” offset each other--although neither is valid in and of itself.

Organized Nature of the Massacres

To repeat, on 13-14 December, Japanese forcesencircled the Chinese army and capturedNanking. Chinese soldiers, lacking a commandstructure after being abandoned by theircommander Tang Shengzhi, lost all will toresist and surrendered en masse only to suffersummary execution in an organized fashion. Akey issue in the Nanking Atrocity, then, is toexplain why these illegal and unjustifiableexecutions took place. One answer is that theimperial army-- at least during the 1937- 45Sino-Japanese War-- lacked any idea thatenemy POWs should be treated in a humanefashion. The idea of universal human rightsspread in modern Western states after theFrench Revolution. Laws governing landwarfare were created one after another to

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ensure the humane treatment of prisoners.Those laws were consolidated in the form ofinternationally accepted conventions at the1899 and 1907 Hague Peace Conferences.From 1868 to 1912-- in the Meiji and Taishôeras before the Shôwa emperor’s reign-- Japancraved recognition as a civilized, modern stateequal to the advanced Western powers; so, itstrove to earn their respect by obeyinginternational laws of war. That is why the Meijiand Taisho emperors included explicit clausesto that effect in rescripts declaring war on theQing Empire in 1894, on tsarist Russia in 1904,and on imperial Germany in 1914. But EmperorHirohito issued no rescript declaring war onthe GMD Republic of China in 1937, althoughthe scale of that conflict was unprecedented byfar. As just noted, there were pragmaticreasons for calling this an “incident”: the lackof a casus belli that the public would findacceptable, and the need to import strategicmatériel from the United States. Thegovernment and military unwittingly escalatedthe up-to-then limited China conflict into a defacto war in August 1937, but even withhostilities spreading in northern China, centralmilitary officials in Tokyo told the ChinaGarrison Army General Staff on 5 August 1937that: “it is inappropriate to follow all specificclauses” in international laws of war, and “ourempire is not in a full-scale war with China, sowe must avoid using terms such as ‘prisoner ofwar’ or ‘prize of war’ that may imply the intentto start one.” The same message repeatedlywent out to other units later. The ArmyMinistry’s position was: the laws of war do notapply to an “incident,” so do not use words thatconnote a formal state of war. This was amomentous change from the past, whenimperial rescripts formally declared wars withthe stern order for officers and men to obeyinternational law.

Imperial army attitudes at this time exudedcontempt for the Chinese army and people. Atextbook for noncommissioned officers (NCOs)issued in January 1933 draws a telling

distinction between Western states and Chinain a section titled, “Treatment of Prisoners”:“There is no need to send them to the rear forconfinement and wait to see how the warsituation changes-- as we would do withnationals of other [Western] powers. In theabsence of special circumstances, it is alrightto release them on the spot or to transportthem elsewhere for release. The Chinese’domicile registration system is full of defects,and most Chinese soldiers are the scum ofsociety, so there is little way for anyone tocheck whether they are alive or where they are.Thus, even if you were to kill them or releasethem elsewhere, no one will broach the issue.”

In sum, central army officials instructed fieldarmies not to apply international laws of war.Tokyo did not deem this nonapplication inChina to be a war crime, so it is natural thatlocal commanders issued orders to “take noPOWs” or to “dispose of” them. Many veteransaffirm that high ranking army- and division-level commanders gave such orders during theassault on Nanking. Thus Lt. Sawada Masahisaof the Independent Heavy Artillery’s SecondBattalion First Company states: “commandheadquarters ordered us to shoot to death onsight” 8,000 to 10,000 POWs taken at XianhoGate on 14 December. (Here, Sawada probablymeans SEA command headquarters; if so, itscommander, Imperial Prince Asaka Yasuhiko,would be complicit.) Or, adjutant KodamaYoshio of the Sixteenth Division’s Thirty-eighthRegiment says that, when his unit got to a point1 or 2 kilometers outside the Nanking citywalls, the division’s adjutant phoned in acommand to “accept no Chinese soldiers whotry to surrender; dispose of them.” Official,public battlefield diaries and battle reports listformal commands to “take care of” POWs. Onefor the Thirty-eighth Regiment contains anorder from the Thirtieth Brigade dated “14December, 4:50 a.m.” Clause 7 reads, “all unitsare forbidden to take POWs until directed bythe [Sixteenth] Division.” A Sixty- eighthRegiment, Third Battalion daily camp ledger

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dated 16 December reads: “Hereafter, make acursory survey of troops taken prisoner; thenunits shall sternly dispose of them.” The Sixty-sixth Regiment’s First Battalion took 1,657Chinese POWs between 10 and 13 Decembercomprising 18 high-ranking officers plus 1,639(NCOs) and troops. A battle report dated 13December records in express detail how thisunit killed them.

(8) Received the following orderfrom our Regimental commanderat 2:00 p.m.A. Kill all POWs in accordance with[One Hundred Twenty-seventh]Brigade orders. As a method, wesuggest tying them up in groups ofless than twenty and shootingthem one by one.B. Collect their weapons and guardt h e s e u n t i l y o u r e c e i v einstructions.C. While the main force of ourRegiment mops up inside the city,yourduties are as outlined above.

(9) Based on the above Regimentalcommand, we [in turn] orderedthat the First, Third, and FourthCompanies collect, sort, and guardweapons . At 3 :30 p .m. , weassembled all companies and, afterdiscussing how to deal with thePOWs, decided on the following.We divided them up in 3 equal-sized units and assigned each ofour 3 companies to oversee one ofthese. Each company would placePOWs in a guard house to be ledout in smaller groups of fifty. TheFirst Company led its group to avalley south of its camp; the ThirdCompany, to a hilly area southwestof i ts camp; and the FourthCompany, to a valley southeast of

its camp. Each company was thensupposed to execute its POWs bybayonet, but take pains to guardthem heavily, so that none wouldnotice [anything suspicious] whenthey were being led out. Allcompanies finished preparationsand began the executions by 5:00o’clock, so most were over byabout 7:30 p.m. The First Companydecided to change plans andinstead tried to burn down itsguard house. This failed. ThePOWs, resigned to their fate, stuckout their heads before our swordsand stood tall before our bayonetswith no sign of fear. Some of them,however, wailed and pleaded formercy, especially when unitcommanders came by to make therounds.

Only a few official battle reports and battlefielddiaries are extant, but we have many personaldiaries and reminiscences testifying thatsummary executions took place on command.There is no doubt that these reflected ordersfrom above and took place systematically-- notjust haphazardly. The organized nature of theAtrocity was a focal point in the late IenagaSaburo’s third lawsuit against the governmentin January 1984. The Ministry of Education hadtried to deny this fact by forcing him to retractan account of the Nanking Atrocity in his highschool Japanese history textbook. He won thesuit in October 1993, when the Tokyo DistrictHigher Court ruled in his favor, and theSupreme Court upheld this decision in August1997. In sum, Japanese law courts and thegovernment now affirm that massacres tookplace in an organized way. Organized massslaughters of POWs, such as that by the OneHundred Third Brigade and Sixty-fifthRegiment at Mufushan as substantiated by OnoKenji in chapter 4, violated international law.

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Defeated Stragglers and “Guerrillas”

The attack on Nanking was a classic example ofencirclement. The SEA’s Ninth and Sixteenthdivisions plus the Thirteenth division’s OneHundred Third Brigade advanced from theeast. The Tenth Army’s Sixth and One Hundred-fourteenth divisions advanced from thesoutheast. The Fifth division’s KunisakiDetachment advanced along the far bank of theYangzi supported by the Eleventh Battle Fleet.Chinese commander Tang Shengzhi at firstmade no preparations to retreat, and indeed,ordered the city to be defended to the last man.But Chiang Kai-shek then ordered the army toescape for future fighting, and Tang had achange of heart as well; so he ordered a retreatat 5:00 p.m. on the twelfth, before Japaneseforces fully surrounded the city in the earlyhours of the thirteenth. In gross dereliction ofhis duty as defense commander, Tang and hisstaff were the first to flee across the YangziRiver.

Abandoned without a chain of command,Tang’s troops lost all will to resist. Hordes ofthem east and south of the city were in chaos,while those trapped inside the city walls fledfor Bajiang Gate, their sole escape hatch, onlyto find it shut. Masses of defeated Chinesetroops and refugees had gathered at Hsiakwanwharf on the thirteenth, when the EleventhBattle Fleet arrived at 5:00 p.m. According toJapanese naval sources, the fleet “fired fiercelyon defeated stragglers who hoped to flee to thefar shore and cut them to ribbons.” With theirescape route by water cut off, masses ofChinese troops began madly rushing up anddown the Yangzi river bank, desperatelyseeking safety. Victory was already decided;virtually all of the defeated Chinese soldierslacked weapons and any will to resist. But theimperial army and navy fired on these helplesstroops and also on civilians. It is clearly wrongto call this a combat operation; it was aslaughter, a massacre. An “annihilation ofdefeated enemy troops”-- plus great numbers of

civilians mixed in-- was conducted by theSixteenth Division at Hsiakwan, Bajiang Gate,and Maqun; and by the Sixth Division atHsiakwan, Xinhechen, and Jiangdong Gate. Infact, each of these actions was simply a turkeyshoot of defenseless people.

Defeated remnants of the Chinese armydiscarded weapons, stripped off their uniforms,and slipped into the city, where the imperialarmy began mop-up operations on 13December with orders to round up anyonesuspected of being a soldier. The Ninth divisionhandled areas south of Zhongshan Road; theSixteenth division, those north of it. On thefourteenth, Japanese troops forayed into theNanking Safety Zone (NSZ), claiming thatdefeated Chinese stragglers, disguised incivilian clothing; that is, guerrillas, had takenrefuge therein. The reasons for this haste lay inthe CCAA’s decision to hold a triumphal entryprocession into Nanking on the seventeenth--made despite SEA objections that this was tooearly to ensure safety. Newspapers at homehad been playing up the capture of the enemycapital, so the CCAA could not lose face byseeming to dawdle. On top of that, Lt. Gen.Asaka Yasuhiko-- an imperial prince and uncleof Emperor Hirohito-- was to take a leadingpart in the ceremony as SEA commander. Thusthe CCAA had to take every possible precautionto prevent harm from befalling his royalpersonage. The SEA’s Ninth Division SeventhRegiment mopped up the Nanking Safety Zonefrom the thirteenth to the twenty-fourth, and itsbattle report records “6,670 [Chinese] killed bybullet and bayonet.” This regiment’s immediatesuperior officer, Brigade commander Maj. Gen.Akiyama Yoshimitsu, stipulated “Points to Notein Mop Up,” dated 13 December. Thisdocument expressly said: “View all youths andadult males as defeated stragglers or soldiersdisguised in civilian clothes; round up anddetain all of them.” This implies that manycivilians were likely among the 6,670 killed.

Seventh Regiment commander Col. Isa Kazuo,

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First Company Private First-Class Mizutani So,and Second Company Lance Cor. InouieMataichi left diaries. Isa made simple entriessuch as “Mopped up from the morning. The[Nanking] Safety Zone is in our area. It is saidto hold about 10,000 refugees” on thefourteenth, or “we sternly disposed of about6,500 over three days of mop up” on thesixteenth. By contrast, Inoie and Mizutani wentinto more specific detail. Inoie, for example,writes: “We set out in the afternoon as well andcame back with 335 young captives. Weferreted out all males among the refugees wholooked like defeated stragglers. Man! Some hadfamily members there, and did they ever wailwhen we tried to take their men folk away!They’d latch on to our arms and bodies,pleading with us.... We took these 335 downnear the Yangzi where other troops shot themdead.” Mizutani’s entry for the sixteenth reads:

In the afternoon we went to the [Nanking]Safety Zone for mop up. We placed sentrieswith bayonets at the intersections, blockedthese off, and went about our work rounding upvirtually all young men we came across. Weroped them off, surrounded them with armedguards, tied them up in rows, and led themaway so that they looked like kids playing choo-choo train. Our First Company clearly took lessthan other units, but we still got a hundred andseveral dozen. Lots of women, no doubt theirmothers or wives, soon caught up with us to cryand beg for their release. Right away, wereleased those who clearly looked like civiliansand shot thirty-six others to death. All of themwailed desperately to be spared, but there wasnothing we could do. Even if some unfortunateinnocent victims were mixed in (we couldn’t tellfor sure), it just couldn’t be helped. Killingsome innocent victims was unavoidable.[CCAA] Commander Matsui ordered us to cleanout each and every anti-Japanese element anddefeated straggler, so we did that in theharshest possible manner.

The SEA Sixteenth Division’s Twentieth

Regiment also mopped up in the Safety Zone.Fourth Company Lance Corporal MasudaRokusuke wrote: “14 December. Mop Up.Entered the [Nanking] Safety Zone. Cleanedout defeated stragglers mixed in with refugees.Our Fourth Company alone took care of no lessthan 500; we shot them dead next to XuanwuGate. I hear that all our units did the samething.” In an account written on the order ofhis company commander after enteringNanking, Masuda noted:

On the morning of the fourteenthwe went to mop up the [Nanking]Safety Zone-- run by some kind ofinternational committee. Wesurrounded tens of thousands ofdefeated stragglers who hadfiercely resisted us until yesterday.Not a single one would escapenow. They all fled into that SafetyZone. But we were determined togo in, search every nook andcranny, flush them all out, andexact revenge for our fallenbuddies. Each of our squads lookedover al l males in those big,complex Chinese houses. In one ofthese, Lance Corporal Maebaraand h is t roops found a fewhundred defeated stragglerschanging into civvies. Hearing ofthis, we went to have a look. Whata sight! Next to them were tons ofrifles, revolvers, swords, and otherweapons. Some of those men werestill in uniform. Some were hastilychanging into ordinary Chineseclothes. Others wore civilian shirtswith army- uniform trousers. All ofthe clothes were either unsuited towinter or mismatched as to shirtsand pants, so the men obviouslyhad grabbed and donned these in abig rush. We led all of them off,stripped them down, checked themout, and tied them up with downed

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telephone wires.... With duskapproaching, we marched close to600 of these defeated stragglersover toward Xuanwu Gate and shotthem dead.

To execute soldiers lacking the will and meansto resist on the pretext that they are “defeatedstragglers” or “combatants disguised in civilianclothes” is unjustifiable, illegal, and inhumane.Worse still, it is a downright atrocity toslaughter huge numbers of civilians in theprocess without making an effort to ascertain ifthey in fact are military personnel. Evenforeign nationals from states friendly to Japanconcurred on this point. On 20 January 1938,the German Branch Consulate in Nanking sentthis report to its Foreign Ministry:

Our few policemen could not stopvast numbers of Chinese soldiersfrom fleeing into the [Nanking]Safety Zone. (Some had thrownaway their arms, but even whenthis was not the case, they lackedany means to resist.) On thatpretext, the Japanese army began amassive search of houses andhauled away all Chinese suspectedof being soldiers. The usualJapanese way of determiningwhom to seize was to check forabrasions or other tell-tale signs ofhaving worn helmets on theirheads, carried rifles on theirshoulders, or lugged knapsacks ontheir backs. Foreign witnesses saythat the Japanese tricked theChinese by promising to give themwork or to pardon them, but thenled them away to be killed. TheJapanese took no steps to declaremartial law or anything of the sort.Why should we expect any suchpretensions on their part? Theyflout the conventions of law in

wartime as well as the rules ofhuman decency?

Conservative revisionists in Japan today denythe Nanking Atrocity or justify it by claimingthat mop-up operations were conducted againstChinese soldiers disguised in civilian clothes.These guerrillas, or would-be guerrillas, it isclaimed, pretended to be peace-loving civiliansbut actually bore concealed weapons waitingfor a chance to snipe at Japanese troops. Thatform of combat violated international laws ofwar, so those Chinese combatants forfeited alllegal rights that POWs enjoy. As this argumentgoes, it was a justifiable act of self-defense forJapanese units to kill them, and it was alsopermissible to capture and execute them forcommitting these acts, which were war crimes.Raids into the Nanking Safety Zone (NSZ), it isheld, were legitimate combat operations towipe out enemy soldiers disguised as civilians.In fact, however, Chinese soldiers who fled intothe NSZ lacked the will to fight that wasneeded to become guerrillas. They had no placeof refuge except the NSZ, and they changedinto civilian clothes simply to avoid being killedby the invaders. It was indefensible forJapanese troops to kill them on the spot with noeffort to ascertain their true status, or toexecute them as war criminals without bringingthem before military tribunals. Furthermore, itwas even less justifiable to kill large numbersof innocent civilians based on arbitrary criteriasuch as having what seemed to be helmet orshoulder-strap abrasions, which purported“proved” that they were soldiers.

Atrocities against Civilians

The “Rape of Nanking,” as it was first called in1937-38, became known the world overbecause of the huge number of rapes and massmurders committed against civilians. Theseatrocities took center stage at the Tokyo warcrimes trials where Chinese victims and foreignwitnesses testified, and the People’s Republicof China (PRC) emphasizes this issue today by

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seeking out ever more victims and witnesses.Thus, crimes against the general civilianpopulation remains the key point in the debateover Nanking. However, conservativerevisionists in Japan remain mum on this point,ignoring all testimonies by Chinese victims,neutral foreign witnesses, and even Japanesevictimizers as being uncorroborated in bonafide primary sources. These conservativesbegrudge at most that: “The Japanese army didcommit misdeeds against the civi l ianpopulation. The International Committee forthe Nanking Safety Zone protested against thekilling of 47 civilians. Not all of these cases canbe substantiated, but even if they could, that’sa total of forty-seven-- hardly a big numbercompared with other armies in history whocaptured and occupied foreign capitals inwartime.” Thus, conservative revisionists denythat Japanese troops perpetrated large- scaleatrocities against Chinese civilians. But theimperial army itself admitted this fact at thetime. On 4 January 1938, IH, in the name ofField Marshal Prince Kan’in Kotohito, an uncleof Emperor Hirohito, issued an unprecedentedstatement to CCAA commander Matsui Iwane:“If we look at actual conditions in the army, wemust admit that much is less than blemish-free.Invidious incidents, especially as to troopdiscipline and morality, have occurred withincreasing frequency of late. However much wemay wish to disbelieve this fact, we cannot buthave doubts.” Though hardly blunt and direct,this imperial prince admonished againstongoing Japanese atrocities.

Other documents clearly show that troops werebeing disciplined for criminal acts at the time.For example, one source is a Tenth Army legaldepartment daily ledger from 12 October 1937to 23 February 1938; another is a CCAAbattlefield courts martial daily ledger from 4January to 6 February 1938. The absurdly smallnumber of military police on hand could notcontrol an invading army of well over 100,000;so we can be sure that only those men caughtfor the most egregious of crimes were court-

martialed, and they were punished only asexamples to deter others. Still, the followingfigures in the Tenth Army legal departmentdaily ledger prove that rapes took place--although these represent the tip of an iceberg.Of the 102 men convicted as of 18 February1938, twenty-two were for rape, twenty-seven,for murder; two for rape-and-murder; and twofor causing bodily injury that resulted in death.Of the 16 men awaiting trial on that date, twowere charged with rape and one with murder.The occurrence of such heinous crimes issubstantiated as well by a directive issued on20 December 1937 that inveighs against thehigh incidence of rape in the Tenth Army: “Wehave told troops numerous times that looting,rape, and arson are forbidden, but judging fromthe shameful fact that over 100 incidents ofrape came to light during the current assaulton Nanking, we bring this matter to yourattention yet again despite the repetition.”

Commander Matsui Iwane himself noted thereality of rape in the CCAA battlefield courtsmartial daily ledger. An entry for 20 Decemberreads: “It seems that our troops committed actsof rape and looting (mainly items like furniture)at about 1:00 p.m.; the truth is that some suchacts are unavoidable.” Matsui’s entry in theledger for 26 December reads: “I again heardof looting and rape in and around Nanking andHangzhou.” In explaining these passages, theNankin senshi’s (History of the NankingCampaign) protective authors claim thatMatsui “construed the so-called ‘NankingIncident’ as comprising violations of foreignrights and privileges in China and incidents ofviolence and looting against the Chinese. Hehad no idea of an ‘Atrocity’ that would arise asa problem later on [at war crimes trials].” Ifthere was “a problem,” however, it layprecisely in this lack of cognizance by thehighest ranking Japanese commander duringthe Nanking campaign.

Indeed, then, the imperial army’s upperechelons d id know that t roops were

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perpetrating rape and violence against Chinesecivilians. Lt. Gen. Okamura Yasuji, who tookover command of the Tenth Army before itsassault on Wuhan in August 1938, laterrecalled: “I surmised the following based onwhat I heard from Staff Officer Miyazaki, CCAASpecial Service Department Chief Harada, andHangzhou Special Service Department ChiefHagiwara a day or two after I arrived inShanghai. First, it is true that tens of thousandsof acts of violence, such as looting and rape,took place against civilians during the assaulton Nanking. Second, front-line troops indulgedin the evil practice of executing POWs on thepretext of [lacking] rations.”

Rapes were especially prevalent at Nanking,and were a focus of the third lawsuit that thelate Ienaga Saburo brought against theJapanese government. In its 1983 screening ofhigh school history textbooks, the Ministry ofEducation ordered him to delete a footnote thatread: “There were many officers and men in theJapanese army who violated Chinese women.”The Ministry did admit that women wereviolated, but insisted that: “This occurred on allbattlefields in all periods of human history. His[Ienaga’s] selection of facts is problematic if hemakes this point only in the case of theJapanese army.” Rape is an immeasurablytraumatic experience for the females involved;it leaves lifelong emotional scars. Given theshame-inducing nature of this crime, victimsnaturally wish to keep it secret; so writtencontemporaneous sources that document it arevery rare. Nevertheless, rape by the imperialarmy was a major problem in the early stagesof the 1937-45 Sino-Japanese War, especially atNanking, even when compared with behavior inthe Meiji-Qing (or First Sino-Japanese) War andthe Russo-Japanese War.

One source that sheds light on this matter is adirective issued in February 1939 by an ArmyMinistry undersecretary to units returninghome from the China front. It sought to ensurethat soldiers exercise discretion in talking

about their experiences; in other words, theyshould keep still about what happened. Anappendix to the source lists the followingspecific examples of verbal statements that thearmy wished to suppress:

(1) At XX, we took four peoplecaptive-- parents and daughters.We played with the daughters as ifthey were whores and killed theparents because they kept ontelling us to release the daughters.We had our kicks until the unit wasordered to leave; then we killedthe daughters. (2) One companycommander hinted that rape wasOK, say ing, “Make sure noproblems arise later on; afteryou’re finished, either pay them offor kill them outright.” (3) Everysoldier who fought in the war mustbe a murderer, armed robber, orrapist. (4) No one cared aboutrapes at the front; some guys evenshot at MPs who caught them inthe act. (5) The only skills I pickedup after half a year in combat werehow to rape and loot.

These are documents left by the perpetrators.Needless to say, the victims left many as well.Foreigners also left testimonies and conductedsurveys. Conservative revisionists say thatthese Western sources lack credibility becauseBritons and Americans were enemies whohated Japan at the time. But nationals offriendly states such as Germany, which signedthe Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan in 1936,also left documents. I have already cited amessage sent by the German Branch Consulatein Nanking. There are also reports to theGerman Foreign Ministry sent by Georg Rosenof the German Consulate staff and by JohnRabe-- a Nazi Party member, Siemens companyemployee, and head of the InternationalCommittee (IC) that administered the NSZ.Even these nationals friendly to Japan candidly

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exposed Japanese misdeeds. For example, on24 December 1937, Rosen reported: “The mostdisgusting acts by Japanese soldiers againstChinese civilians have come to light; theseclearly work against Germany’s policy ofthwarting the spread of Communism.” On 15January 1938, he reported: “Over a month haspassed since the Japanese army occupiedNanking, but soldiers are still abducting andraping women and girls. In that sense, theJapanese army is erecting a monument to itsown dishonor.” Rosen also noted that Japanesesoldiers were breaking into the GermanEmbassy and the ambassador’s officialresidence demanding women.

John Rabe’s diary describes horrible rapes byJapanese soldiers. For example, on 17December he writes: “One of the Americans putit this way: ‘The Safety Zone has turned into apublic house for the Japanese soldiers.’ That’svery close to the truth. Last night up to 1,000women and girls are said to have been raped,about 100 girls at Ginling Girls College alone.You hear of nothing but rape. If husbands orbrothers intervene, they’re shot. What you hearand see on all sides is the brutality andbestiality of the Japanese soldiery.” On 24December Rabe noted: “Dr. Wilson used theopportunity to show me a few of his patients.The woman who was admitted because of amiscarriage and had the bayonet cuts all overher face is doing fairly well.” This woman isprobably Li Xiuying, one plaintiff in a lawsuitover wartime compensation launched byChinese victims in the Tokyo District Court.Such objective contemporaneous reports byWesterners constitute undeniable evidence thathuge numbers of rapes took place. And, I wishto stress, these reports were tendered bymembers of a nationality friendly to Japan, notby Chinese victims or by American, Australian,and British “enemies.”

The imperial army responded to thosecriticisms by creating typically Japanese“comfort stations” staffed by so-called “comfort

women.” At an inquiry prior to the Tokyo WarCrimes Trials, a former Kwantung Army staffofficer, Tanaka Ryukichi, gave this account ofhow the institution came into being: “[CCAAStaff Officer] Cho Isamu told me that officersand troops were raping too many women, so heset up brothels in Nanking to stop this.”Earlier, in the 1918-22 Siberian Intervention,Japanese troops had used “comfort women” toprevent rapes and the spread of venerealdisease. Now, alarmed by the high incidence ofrape at Nanking, the imperial army organizedgroups of such women to accompany troopsduring the later assault on Wuhan. Thereafter,the army officially recognized and set upcomfort stations wherever it went. Becausethere were not enough Japanese women tomeet the increased demand, Korean womenwere secured by fraud or force and sent to thefront. Rapes occurred repeatedly all the wayfrom Shanghai to Nanking and also in thecapital after it fell. This was a major war crimeperpetrated by the imperial army; indeed, theepithet “Rape of Nanking,” as the event wascalled at the time, came to stand for theAtrocity as a whole. This war crime not only leftdeep scars on the Chinese, it also has hadmajor implications for problems that plagueJapan’s relations with North and South Korea.Conservative revisionists in Japan deny that aNanking Atrocity took place by asserting thatonly this or that many people were victimized,or that empir ica l ev idence for theirvictimization is not ironclad. But we will nevercomprehend the true nature of Japaneseatrocities at Nanking if we turn a blind eye tothe tens of thousands of women reputedlyraped there.

Historical Awareness

The Nanking Atrocity symbolized Japan’s warof aggression against China. There wereforeign embassies and news agencies inNanking, then the capital of China, so reportsof the Atrocity went out to the entire world.The Japanese people alone, with few

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exceptions, remained in the dark because ofsevere wartime censorship. Thus the greatmajority of Japanese learned about the Atrocityonly during the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, whichfirst broached the issue of Japan’s war guilt andculpabi l i ty . Foreign physic ians andmissionaries who had lived in Nanking, plusChinese persons victimized there, testified atTokyo. Other types of evidence includedsociologist Lewis Smythe’s surveys of damages,burial records left by the Nanking branch of theChinese Red Cross, the Red Swastika Society,and also those by other local organizations. Asa result of this evidence, CCAA commanderMatsui Iwane received the death sentence. Theverdict read: “the total number of civilians andPOWs murdered in Nanking and its vicinityduring the first six weeks of the Japaneseoccupation was over 200,000.” Article XI of theSan Francisco Peace Treaty, signed in 1951,stipulates: “Japan accepts the verdicts of warcrimes trials.” In sum, the postwar Japanesegovernment formally admits that imperialJapan waged a war of aggression and that itmassacred over 200,000 people at Nanking.

Matsui Iwane brought in at the Tokyo Trial

But unlike its former ally Germany, Japan didnot make an all-out effort to prosecute warcrimes or criminals later in the postwar eraafter the Allied Occupation ended. Formerwartime leaders, even some who had been

convicted of A-class war crimes, returned topositions of power. Sentiments to affirm oreven glorify the war became influential afterthe San Francisco Peace Treaty took effect andJapan regained sovereignty in April 1952. Asseen in the Ienaga lawsuits beginning in 1967,the Ministry of Education censored schooltextbooks to ban words such as “aggression” ordelete mention of the Nanking Atrocity.Moreover, conservative revisionists began toargue that the Atrocity was a fabrication or anillusion. From the 1970s onward, controversiesthreatening the very basis of historical facthave raged in Japan. In 1982, China and SouthKorea formally protested against Japan’sgovernment when they learned of conditionssurrounding textbook screening. The SuzukiZenko regime, in power from July 1980 toNovember 1982, settled this diplomatic rift byhaving Miyazawa Kiichi, Director of the CabinetSecretariat, proclaim that Japan “reaffirms thespirit of self-criticism espoused in the [1972]‘Sino- Japanese Joint Statement’ and [1965]‘Joint Communiqué’ between Japan and SouthKorea,” and a lso that “ the Japanesegovernment will take responsibility forcorrecting textbook passages.” Hawks in theruling Liberal Democratic Party as well asother right-wing elements lashed out at Chinaand South Korea for allegedly intervening inJapanese internal affairs on this and otherissues; and, as a result, debates over historyflared up again, with deniers contending thatthe Nanking Atrocity was a fiction or afalsehood. In response, we formed the Societyto Study the Nanking Incident in 1982, and ithas continued publishing scholarly books andarticles to this day. As more and more of thesestudies appeared, most aspects of the Atrocityhave become clearly known.

The fatal scholarly blow to the conservativerevisionist cause came between April 1984 andMarch 1985 when the Kaikosha elicitedtestimonies from members who had served atNanking for publication in its monthly, theKaiko. Its editors hoped they would settle the

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controversy once and for all by publishing greatnumbers of eyewitness testimonies that deniedmajor misdeeds. But contrary to thoseexpectations, many Kaikosha members sent inaccounts affirming that massacres, rapes, andother acts of wanton violence took place. Totheir credit, the Kaiko editors published thesematerials unaltered, and Chief Editor KatogawaKotaro ended the series in March 1985 with anarticle titled, “Summing Up,” in which headmitted the fact of illegal killings, and even ofmassacres. He cited estimated victim counts of3,000 to 6,000 tendered by Unemoto Masami,and of 13,000, by Itakura Masaaki; andKatogawa concluded the series by saying:

We Deeply Apologize to theChinese People.

To repeat: 3,000 to 6,000 is aterrible figure; how much more soi s 13 ,000 . When we begancompiling our history, we wereprepared to accept that Japan wasnot innocent. Nevertheless, we canonly reflect upon such hugenumbers with deep sadness. Nomatter what the conditions ofbattle were, and no matter howthat affected the hearts of men,such large-scale illegal killingscannot be justified. As someoneaffiliated with the former Japanesearmy, I can only apologize deeplyto the Chinese people. I am trulysorry. We did horrible things toyou.

The Kaikosha published a semi-official history,the Nankin senshi, plus a collection of primarysources, the Nankin senshi shiryo shu. Thesetwo works list 15,760 civilian casualties and16,000 POWs summarily killed, but the editorstook a reactionary step by insisting that not allof these were illegal or illegitimate killings, andthat Chinese counterclaims of 200,000 or300,000 victims are fabricated. Even so, by

publishing primary sources that contain thefacts and by admitting the Atrocity’s historicity,the Kaikosha conclusively repudiated falseclaims that the event never took place or wasan illusion. Indeed, several contributors to thepresent volume, myself included, cite theseKaikosha publications in our chapters. Thus, asa scholarly argument, denial was dead.

H o w e v e r , t h e 1 9 9 0 s b r o u g h t n e wdevelopments. Konoe Fumimaro’s grandson,Prime Minister Hosokawa Morihiro, in 1993admitted that “aggressive acts”-- though notaggression itself-- took place in the last war.And, in 1995 Prime Minister MurayamaTomiichi from the Japan Socialist Partyexpressed self-criticism and sorrow for Japan’scolonial rule and aggression in Asia. Thosestatements provoked more right-wing efforts toaffirm and glorify the war and to denyhistoricity to the Nanking Atrocity- -propositions that had suffered refutation inacademic circles. Once more, battles overhistorical awareness erupted. Today, this is nolonger a debate over facts or empirical proof,no longer a matter of scholarship. Conservativerevisionists today who insist on denying theNanking Atrocity-- despite all evidence to thecontrary-- do so for political reasons. They wishto sanctify a road to future wars by glorifyingthe last one. According to them, Japan isalready an economic power; it now should jointhe ranks of political and military powers too.This means winning a permanent seat on theUN Security Council. To do that, they argue,Japan must make suitable internationalcontributions by sending troops overseas tojoin in combat roles as part of UN armedforces. But before that can happen, theJapanese must amend or eliminate Article IX oftheir postwar Constitution so that their nationcan once again use military force to settleinternational disputes. Such constitutionalrevision can not take place until the Japaneseovercome their aversion to wars in general,based on misperceptions of the last one theyfought, and until they stop their abject practice

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of “diplomacy by apology” due to unwarrantedfee l ings o f war gui l t . In sum, as theconservative revisionist line goes, pacifism andservility are foolish because World War II was ajust and glorious one for Japan. This is thenakedly political logic motivating those

conservative revisionists who go on denying theAtrocity’s factuality long after such claims havebeen exposed as scholarly bankrupt.

This article was posted at Japan Focus onOctober 23, 2007.